I don’t remember whether it was 5th or 6th book in the Harry Potter series but I still can’t forget that photo I saw in the leading daily showing around 100 people standing in the queue waiting for the bookstore to open to grab a copy of the book on the releasing day. The second image was showing 12 year olds reading the book immediately in the bookstore forgetting about their parents. I have seen such children only in parks. J.K. Rowling deserves to be called as a revolutionary as she gifted a new hobby to young ones in the era of video games.
Guess what! India also has its own J.K. Rowling. But here he is a successful IIT and IIM graduate and a successful banker before becoming the Rowling of India. Perhaps people will beat me for comparing him with Rowling, but it’s true in a way or two. I remember when I was preparing for JEE and had never ever heard of the prodigy called Chetan Bhagat! I picked a copy of Five Point Someone to know about the IIT life. I was already a Dan Brown fan till then and also had read Sidney Sheldon, so I did not like the book but it had something which made me to finish it. Story was simple and it would make biology students to start preparing for JEE. For that unknown reason, I read all other Chetan Bhagat books. Three mistakes was actually better than others but one can easily skip these books as there are plenty of good books in English literature for which one life is not enough.
It’s not like I hate Chetan Bhangat but few things really frustrate me. Now we have got so many such writers in India who write dull and lousy plots. It became worse when Chetan Bhagat’s books started converting into Bollywood films. But few good writers have also come in this era like Amish Tripathi or Ravi Subramanian. At least I can praise Amish for his imagination. It was fun to read his books except the third one in Shiva trilogy, all three were proper bollywood masala types though!
An incident happened last year which made me compare Chetan Bhagat with Rowling, not for his books but for what he has done. I was there at a bloggers’ meet in Bangalore organized by Indiblogger and a person who belonged to a rural area in Karnataka who had a blog in regional language was a Chetan bhagat fan and he started writing after reading his books. Now it was something. That day I learned that you don’t have to be a Dan Brown or Ken Follet to reach to your readers and make people to start reading and adopting it as a hobby.
Today all the dailies are having articles on Chetan Bhagat’s upcoming book ‘Half-Girlfriend’ which made me to write this article. After all the criticism for his books, TOI columns, everyone accepts the fact that Chetan Bhagat has given and is still giving thousands of fresh readers to Indian literature. If they start reading foreign authors then it will be a victory of the language else our Indian authors will always have a long and glamorous life. If I get a chance to meet Chatan bhagat in future then I have only one request for him that he has got a huge readers’ base and he can actually do wonders in Indian literature. In simple words: please don’t repeat Revolution 2020 or Half-Girlfriend!
P.S. Here are the links to the articles I have mentioned from today's dailies:
Business Standard
TOI Blog
DNA
India Today
TOI
Guess what! India also has its own J.K. Rowling. But here he is a successful IIT and IIM graduate and a successful banker before becoming the Rowling of India. Perhaps people will beat me for comparing him with Rowling, but it’s true in a way or two. I remember when I was preparing for JEE and had never ever heard of the prodigy called Chetan Bhagat! I picked a copy of Five Point Someone to know about the IIT life. I was already a Dan Brown fan till then and also had read Sidney Sheldon, so I did not like the book but it had something which made me to finish it. Story was simple and it would make biology students to start preparing for JEE. For that unknown reason, I read all other Chetan Bhagat books. Three mistakes was actually better than others but one can easily skip these books as there are plenty of good books in English literature for which one life is not enough.
It’s not like I hate Chetan Bhangat but few things really frustrate me. Now we have got so many such writers in India who write dull and lousy plots. It became worse when Chetan Bhagat’s books started converting into Bollywood films. But few good writers have also come in this era like Amish Tripathi or Ravi Subramanian. At least I can praise Amish for his imagination. It was fun to read his books except the third one in Shiva trilogy, all three were proper bollywood masala types though!
An incident happened last year which made me compare Chetan Bhagat with Rowling, not for his books but for what he has done. I was there at a bloggers’ meet in Bangalore organized by Indiblogger and a person who belonged to a rural area in Karnataka who had a blog in regional language was a Chetan bhagat fan and he started writing after reading his books. Now it was something. That day I learned that you don’t have to be a Dan Brown or Ken Follet to reach to your readers and make people to start reading and adopting it as a hobby.
Today all the dailies are having articles on Chetan Bhagat’s upcoming book ‘Half-Girlfriend’ which made me to write this article. After all the criticism for his books, TOI columns, everyone accepts the fact that Chetan Bhagat has given and is still giving thousands of fresh readers to Indian literature. If they start reading foreign authors then it will be a victory of the language else our Indian authors will always have a long and glamorous life. If I get a chance to meet Chatan bhagat in future then I have only one request for him that he has got a huge readers’ base and he can actually do wonders in Indian literature. In simple words: please don’t repeat Revolution 2020 or Half-Girlfriend!
P.S. Here are the links to the articles I have mentioned from today's dailies:
Business Standard
TOI Blog
DNA
India Today
TOI
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I have read only one book of his - the first book, five point someone, and I liked it. For some reason, I have not read any of his other books yet. Am reading more of classics and literary fiction, now. I also read a lot of non-fiction. I have written a short novel in my blog, hope ppl. will like it. If you want to read it, just contact me via the contact form in my blog. I'll send you a copy :)
ReplyDeleteThanks sir for reading the post. I was going through your blog posts and I liked the story behind 'Destination Infinity'.
DeleteI would love to read your book. It is nice to see that you are climbing that ladder to become a successful author. All the best! :-)